Here's an idea. Why don't you subtract line 32 from line 31, multiply the result by .058, and then suck it?

Yeah, you heard me. Suckit.

While you're sucking it, I'll be burning financial documents and chugging Pinot Grigio like my paltry refund depended on it. Good thing I sleep next to a fireplace, because I have plenty to burn and I'm about to pass out.

Oh: I've decided that this will be the final year that I'll be filing taxes, because I'm going to make some major life changes. From here on out, I'll basically be scavenging and "living off the land". All work that I do henceforth will be performed only on terms of barter... for wampum, wheels of cheese, various beaver and otter pelts, etc. (Synthetic, of course.)

Also, whenever I come across any of your government's paper "money", I will promptly burn it, especially if I'm still sitting by this fireplace. That's basically what we both do with it anyway. At least this way the flame warms my little toesies.

Thanks so much!Ryan D. Pants

P.S. Suck it.P.P.S. Please send my return in the form of 2002 Woodbridge... preferably unopened, but I'm not picky.P.P.P.S. Add to 44 comments.

Last night I lay still, on the hard pavement of a narrow street in a tiny dim village between two inconceivably old glacial lakes, in the middle of the lovely and endless California, halfway up the side of earth. Above me I could see about a bajillion stars

In comparison, LA is big and bright and stipid. Hot, to be sure., I'll be coming back around at some point, now that my little month long vacation / performance / reading / fishing / recovery period is over. I'll have new words and images and designs and films to show you soon.

Design work has been falling into my lap like spaghetti sauce lately, and I also have a few other creative projects to keep me busy. Which is good, right? But as such I may be away from this site for a while... but that's okay. Nobody much is visiting anyway. Maybe I'll throw together something new and exciting before my June 1st trip back east. In the meantime, be patient and drink water, okay?
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After a long day spent indoors working on partially successful design projects, last night's trip to the Brass Monkey karaoke bar off Wilshire was just what I needed. The crowd was a little thin, but that place always has a great sense of the absurdity and irony of the... "medium". A whole group of us went - another lovely stop on the farewell-to-Los-Angeles tour of dearCatherine, following her 29th birthday party on Saturday, and a day trip to Disneyland last week. I already miss her, and the rest of LA will, too.

After two gin and tonics and two Coronas, I performed my much anticipated and shower-practiced rendition of Maneater by sexy groundbreaking pop duo Hall and Oates sometime around midnight. My performance included comb, beer, and cereal-box sunglasses props, and a 45 second air-sax solo. It went pretty well... such sweet release. The woman is WILD, Wooo ooh ooh ohoh!

Any nominees for or stories about other Karaoke classics?
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los angeles sits still like a long day's drive, stereo bouncing, cup of morning coffee. why doesn't anybody signal in this god-forsaken city? i cannot read the mind of you or your automobile, and i need to know which way you indend to go, mr. mercedes truck, so i do not kill you or the man on roller skates.

if i leave this place, i will miss driving towards mountains. i work halfway down laurel canyon into hollywood, just below mulholland drive. the drive in and out of the valley pushes a look up at haze-graded silohuettes, a look down at sim city. this topography makes it hard to forget that, beyond southern california, lie many elsewheres and others. Places and peoples. Sometimes I sing sarcastic songs about careless drivers, tapping on the steering column. Sometimes I pretend I'm in a movie.
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My friend Andy linked two of the funnist movie downloads you will watch this month. As he put it, "If you're going to videotape your Star Wars fighting skills on a school camera, remember to remove the cassette when you're done". Check out the first video, and then be sure to watch the version edited and remixed by some clever geeks out there in Star Wars BBS land. Man. I'm going to watch them both again right now. [*laughs* *roars*].

A company in Philadelphia has basically developed the most important technology ever. According to CEO Brian Appel, "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming." Seriously. Big machines grind, pressure-steam any and all carbon-based waste (turnkey offal, tires, sewage, plastic, wood) , and then cool the slurry to create natural gas, light crude oil, water, and rich minerals. Unbelieveable (via Leonard).

Test your geographic knowledge of the Mid-East and Northern Africa with a fun interactive map. I didn't do so well.

Within the past week I've become obsessed with Neko Case's recent album, Blacklisted. God, it's so good. Her haunting alt.indy.country melodies and reverbancholy vocals kick you right in the heart. In the six-degrees of music world, it's no suprise that the Giant Sand / Calexico boys (more favorites of ours) from Tuscon play with her on nearly every track. Get the album.

The display on my cell phone has been going wiggy, so I decided to get it checked out by professionals. I went to the cell phone people on Ventura Blvd. When I arrived, only three employees and two customers were in the store. I stood in front of the customer service counter. I heard something about the sign-in clipboard, and added my name once I found it. I stood around, shuffling in place. My back hurt. It usually does. I looked at new cell phones, better than mine, with their color displays, trippy face-plates and flip-tops. I looked at the blotchy red map of the US on the wall, part of an ad poster about long-distance coverage. More people waddled into the store and added their names to the list. A pretty girl with nice sneakers walked in, made eye-contact with me, made eye-contact with the sign-in sheet, and left. A stout man wanted to reactivate his phone, but only one of the five computers in the store had the power to do that sort of thing, and apparently it was in use. He scowled some, and rubbed his balding head. I played with the Automated Bill Payment Machine, but didn't pay my bill. The machine beeped too much. The music reel on the P.A. was not good. I thought about Avril Lavigne and how much she sucks, even though she can sing and has a pretty mouth. 700 peak minutes is a lot of minutes, I thought outloud. What would I do with them? The balding blue-collar fellow was growing impatient, but he was quiet about it. Finally, they began to call names. I fingered pamphlets, looking at the shape of service agreement fine print in different european languages. This hipster valley mother-daughter Gilmore-Girls type combo asked me how long I'd been waiting. I told them I could barely remember my own name in this place, and they laughed. I pretended to be zoned out, to amuse them. I was atracted to both of them. That never happens. Funny, that. Together we riffed on the dreariness of the room and incompetence of the employees with a comforting irony. I had taken to choreographing my jimmy-leg shuffle: back forth, back forth left right repeat. Does new Jewel suck worse than old Jewel? It is an impressively reinvented suckiness. I looked at phone spec sheets and wondered how much wireless web goes for these days. The carpet looked sterile. Eventually young Dustin came to help me, tomato hair, Listerine tie and all. He read my name off of the clipboard. He quickly produced a phone identical to my Kyocera 2235, and promised to transfer my contacts to the new unit. He hooked it to a Windows machine, making that muffled bleep-blip sound. A lovely brown-haired girl smiled at me, to my suprise. Multiple people were trying out multiple ring-tones, in a cacauphony of discomfort. A customer who had just left returned in a huff, pissed off at the dark-skinned female employee who had activated her second phone. "Do you understand what you're doing? You carried my phone over there without telling me anything. Nothing! And now the contact lists on BOTH phones are blank!" The employee tried to calmly explain, but the woman kept cutting in, impatient and upset. She had a small band-aid just below her right eye. "I am just very disappointed," she said.

We were all disappointed. Eventually I floated outstride down Ventura, poking at the new piece of hardware, already familiar in shape and texture, already filled with the names and numbers of the people in my life. The replacement was free on warranty, but after 61 minutes in the store with only 52 minutes on the meter, the trip cost me one $35 parking ticket. I'm going to contest the ticket by writing down small lies and mailing them to the government.
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it's been a strange and fun and dark and restless and sleepful few weeks. how's that for vauge and cryptic... it finally seemed a good time to return to the web site and write.

i took my bike out at dusk, after ample stretching. my shorts shake when i pedal, listening to 80s pop mp3s. i missed that rush, sliding in and out of traffic, helmetless, in headlight glare.

flowers waft extra perfume your way, in southern california. night time. drafting trucks but coughing at the exhaust. the nose knows... it was one of those nights when it seems like everyone was having ziti for dinner.